


Might End Up Being Me

by J (j_writes)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Female Jack, GTA AU, Gen, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 03:22:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4463558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael moves things around deliberately, like he’s trying to sort them into categories, tell the Vagabond from the Skull, Ryan from James from Haywood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Might End Up Being Me

**Author's Note:**

> [fictional characters based on the internet personas of actual people, doing entirely fictional things. I do not give permission for this work or any of my others to be used in Rooster Teeth content.]
> 
> (previously posted to tumblr, originally started [here](http://seraphface.tumblr.com/post/125303022082/nonbinary-ryan-with-their-face-hidden-under-a))

Ryan comes to Los Santos in layers, bundled from the inside out with identities and rumors, with the kinds of stories that couldn’t possibly be true, and the kinds that couldn’t be anything but. 

_____________

It’s Michael who peels off the first layer, unintentionally, digging through Ryan’s bag for his phone that he’d stashed there in the heat of everything and pausing with his fingers tangled up in the remnants of Ryan’s many lives. "What do you have,“ he asks, "the whole fucking world in here?” and sticks almost his entire face into the bag, moving things around deliberately like he’s trying to sort them into categories, tell the Vagabond from the Skull, Ryan from James from Haywood. 

Ryan snatches the bag back, tosses Michael his phone wordlessly, and carefully shakes the bag, rattling everything back into disarray.

______________

Jack is next, in the bathroom of a safehouse, giving a low sound of concern as her fingers trace over the ragged holes scraped through Ryan’s gloves, the raw skin underneath.

“Can I…?” she asks, her eyes looking up at Ryan, fingers sliding up to the edge of the gloves, and Ryan hesitates before nodding.

Jack’s hands are quick and capable, and there’s something almost soothing about the way she hums tunelessly as she works, like she’s forgotten Ryan’s even there. She slides the gloves back on when she’s done, faintly damp and still torn, but clean, and a week later a new pair appears in Ryan’s bag, softer and more comfortable than the old ones had ever been.

______________

“I could use another set of eyes,” is all Ryan says before Ray’s nodding.

“I can give you two,” he replies, tapping the frames of his glasses.

The meeting is stiff and cold, a remnant from another life, Ryan’s silhouette flickering under a dying parking lot light like something out of a bad thriller, and there would have been a time not too long ago when it wouldn’t have been reassuring to know that someone from Ramsey’s crew was watching through their sights.

It’s brief, relatively painless, and on the drive back, Ryan says into the silence, “You’re not gonna ask?”

Ray shrugs. “Don’t care. That’s why you asked me, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Ryan replies, but feels like there’s a little more to the truth than that.

_______________

It’s Gavin that Ryan touches deliberately first, dragging him close in the back of the helicopter, Gavin’s clothes soaked through to his skin, hair rumpled and standing on end, arms wrapped around himself as he shivers miserably. He curls in against Ryan’s side easily, like he would with Michael, with Geoff, and Ryan’s chest goes tight for a brief moment.

It’s easy enough to peel the jacket off, Gavin letting out a quiet protesting noise at the movement until the coat drops around his shoulders. It’s comically big, draping around him, and Ryan laughs quietly, tipping until the mask is leaning lightly against the top of Gavin’s head.

“It’s a good look,” Ryan says, and Gavin lets out a choked little laugh, his fingers going tight around the leather and pulling it more firmly around him.

________________

“I like to know my people,” Geoff says.

The lights around the pool are dim, the water still rippling faintly from the last splashes of movement from Gavin and Michael before they went tearing back downstairs, and Ryan had been pretty sure that Geoff was asleep before he spoke, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, even under the night sky.

“I know,” Ryan says. 

Geoff sits up, pushing the glasses up into his hair, reaching for his drink. "I don’t know you.“

Ryan’s quiet in response, because the answer that comes to mind is _You do, though. You all do, in ways no one has in a long time, maybe ever,_ and the truth of it is terrifying.

"This is the part,” Geoff continues, “where you point out that you’re not my people.”

There’s a part of Ryan that wants to, that knows the reasonable response here is to do exactly that. To stand and gather up all the pieces - the bag, the jacket, all the layers that have been left discarded physically and metaphorically throughout the hallways of Geoff’s penthouse, and start again, somewhere new, as someone else.

Instead, Ryan reaches up, and takes off the mask.


End file.
